A Week of Adventure

Happy Friday!  Welcome to More Rambling Than Usual!  A one time post.  Because I’m a flibbertigibbet and can’t be repetitious for long.

Rotations

I have played everything except GW2 so far this week, not necessarily in it’s assigned day slot.   I find myself as I’m writing the PlayNotes, kind of becoming involved in each game and character’s story, and sometimes I can’t wait to get back to a particular set of adventures.

I am enjoying playing most things more because of that what happens next element.

One thing that I have learned from this is that for me, MMOs are certainly not “all the same”, each game in my rotation is successful in creating a very unique world.  It doesn’t matter to me if the mechanics or frameworks are similar, each is very distinct and immersive.  I’ve never enjoyed playing more than now, I think.

The only thing I am seeing is I need a nice grid or chart that reminds me what button is for capturing a screen, which removes UI, various basic commands like opening bags, calling pets and mounts, adding toolbars and removing skills.   I take it this is common and it is why people are always tweaking the UI in the game settings to make them all the same in every game if they can so they don’t have to make the switch mentally. 

I don’t do this, because early on I became very interested in how the game is built from the ground up, and I respect the choices made by those who designed the thing, and I’m going to adapt rather than choose these aspects of the game to “make it my own”.

Secret World

Working on the Kingsmouth Code sequence I found myself in an Illuminati tunnel that was very familiar to me from the first go around.  I think I had a post on it whose title included the words “Don’t Gas Me!”    I took the poisonous gassing at each puzzle much better this time.   Dead, dead, dead, ho hum.

I’m really pushing to get Kingsmouth finished so I can move on to Solomon’s Island.  I’m up to level 14 and am working for crazy Edgar at the junkyard who has no concept of personal space and I bet he hasn’t bathed in several years.   Still stuck on that Dawning of Endless Night Tunnel with the motion sensors and Cassandra, another person with no concept of personal space.  I’m going to save that till last.

I’ve decided not to try to work with the old game as well,  after playing SWL, it is all I need, and nothing is so different that I can’t just enjoy the game as it now is.

World of Warcraft

My shining glory character this week is my low level (less than ten) Arms Warrior.  She’s my first Elf who wasn’t a Druid or Mage.  She’s just uber lean and powerful, and is making her own finery.  She has these cool moves, that I don’t notice on my higher level Warriors.

I’m working in the Dolanar area and dang, this new to me server is really high population and for the first time since I’ve been playing, there are a bunch of people around.  This is usually a quiet spot in Azeroth, but I actually had to fight for mobs at one place, particularly against a Hunter who tried to hit and loot out from under me every mob.  Sucker.

I hadn’t started any new characters in WOW in a long time, and didn’t realize that last year they stuck you in a particular specialization for your first ten levels of the game.  They used to just give you a sprinkling of the skills from the three specializations.

Cone of Alt-a-holic shame, I now have ten characters here, and this wasn’t a real problem on any of the others, though I didn’t care much for the Warlock assigned Affliction spec.   I got Frost Mage, which I always use, and Retribution Paladin, always my choice.

The Warrior comes in as Arms, which is what I turn out to have on my other two.  However, though they stick you in that spec, they give you a one handed sword, and Arms can’t use their skills without a two handed sword equipped.   For a level 6 person, I could just buy a claymore from a vendor.

The problem came in for a new Death Knight.   They make you an Unholy, and you have a two handed sword.  I couldn’t change her to Frost, my usual, because you now must have a one hand equipped to play Frost.  Quest rewards two-handed, why no choice?   She, I don’t feel, could just buy a trick one handed sword from a vendor, because she’s fighting all higher level stuff.  Once I was in Stormwind, I could have bought one from auction, but pricing is pretty crazy.   Luckily for me, I was long in the habit of using the Blood spec for adventuring and questing and Frost for dungeons.  Blood can use two handed.  I’m just going to run her through questing till she is offered a one hand or I make enough money to buy one (all these characters are broke).  PITA for no good reason.   At least be thoughtful of the fact that you are making someone play a particular spec, and aren’t giving them the equipment they need to play it.

Everquest 2 Fallen Earth

I felt like I should try to get my level 10 Fury namesake someplace, not just let her flounder.  She didn’t get the nice teleport skill or the turn into a pretty wolf spell at level 10 as did the AB character.
I’m giving it my best power leveling kill everything you come across technique, but it’s crawl crawl goes the xp.

I’m having trouble finding some Young Bears for a quest so I was exploring all over the Antonica area outside the Qeynos gates trying to find them.

Criminy, out from behind an innocuous tower pops a level 16 Dark Shaman guy.

 Naturally, my level 10 Fury tries to make a run for it.   And again with the running backwards thing.  See my health bar go down as I run!  It was down to nearly zilch before miraculously he stopped chasing me.   Bonus: I found I can hit my heals while running backwards!  This is what saved me really, the ability to run and heal.  I hate when you have to be stationary to heal.   Honestly, I’d prefer you could use almost any skill on the move.

This character is on Fallen Earth, the new progression server.   I’d like her in a guild for the advice you can get, and hopefully for grouping.

Thanks to a post from the Ancient Gaming Noob, I knew you could search for a guild that was recruiting and actually talk to a person who could invite you and ask question who was online now.  Whoa.    https://tagn.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/looking-for-nostalgia-in-fallen-gate/

I tried this, but didn’t see anything that seemed a good match.  But it was midnight, and I was tired and feeling tso social, so I decided to wait.

Which brings me to thought on Guilds once more.

I posted a week or so ago on guilds and what I wanted them to be.  I’ve left the Wow guild I was in and via a random invite almost immediately joined another.   My thought now, because I’m such an introspective dolt, is, how can I be a good guild member?  What makes you a valuable addition to a guild?   What do I do well as a guildie, what should I work on?

Being part of a group should be a whole package thing, what do they do for your gameplay, how do you contribute to the gameplay of others.

Sticking points for me:

I can’t stand having a guild name over my head that I don’t like.   Babsie’s Bobbers, no.   Deathly Dreamers, ya, ok.

Discord      Everybody’s got it.    Everyone wants you to be on it.  I honestly don’t want to randomly chat with anyone I don’t know.  I don’t want to talk politics, or anything else that isn’t related to the game world.  I’m almost always playing late, like 9pm to 1am, and zzzz you don’t want to talk to me at that time of the day either.   So everyone who is all proud they’ve got Discord and wants you to chime in:  Gamebreaker.

PlayNotes Testing Testing

I’ve spared you the actual notes, (until now) but somehow on Monday my coffee fueled brain went all crazy on World of Warcraft thoughts, and I wanted to write a well composed post from my notes, but you know, that just isn’t me.

Then I saw this great E3 summation by http://xyzzysqrl.livejournal.com/502505.html   
and really enjoyed the way it was a list of sorts, but a greatly entertaining one.   I like lists. I make them every day. 

This led my twisty mind to devise an experiment wherein I will take notes while I play and just pop them into this space after the session.  I personally enjoy reading blogs not just for the Big Ideas people have, – and there are some brilliant game bloggers out there having them!- but for seeing what people think about games as they play them, because sometimes they feel the same way I do and sometimes they give a glimpse of other ways to approach a game.

What to call this experiment?  I used the title “Afterplay” previously, and it’s descriptive but somehow I don’t like it.  I’m going to go with PlayNotes, though I also came up with the obnoxiously funny Raw Thots. 

I’ll start Sunday and will play each game in my rotation for the week, taking notes as I do and dropping them in here.  Boring yet fun! Hey, it’s summertime!

PlayNotes Issue #1  (So you can skip the rest of the week if this makes you buggy.  However if this makes you buggy, all my posts probably do, and you don’t read this blog anyway.  Hmmpf.

I’ve been leveling my WOW Paladin and decided to just push her forward to the top, because I have the rare opportunity with the guild I’m in to do the biggies: Mythics, Heroics, Raids!!!  I’m quite certain they’ll make me a better Paladin and Player. 

I have been having a great time working in the lower areas of Azeroth, and really sort of hated to abandon them to move forward in the game to areas up ahead I don’t enjoy so much.  This thinking led to my disjointed notes:

For me, Wow is almost 4 different games

From the beginning to Northrend.   Great maps, love all the dungeons, storylines make each area unique. 

Pandaria, where they take away flight for awhile for the first time and dungeons become uninteresting.  The grind of Dailies appears.  Rep grinds galore.  The grind of the Timeless Isle to get decent gear to move forward.  GRIND-O-MATIC begins!

Draenor  Once again no flight till they decide you’ve earned it.  Killed Inscription making it a bizarre little gambling game for the Inscriptionist.  I do not know why people didn’t complain more about this.   Crafting generally takes a big shot for actual crafters in order to give non-crafting types their very own insta-gear, but only three pieces.   Here is where I thought crafting was just gathering endlessly and dropping it all down a hole to come out the other side as…not much.  As I’ve said elsewhere, I craft to make things for other people, and this was all just me, me me.    You absolutely had to do the gear grind in the Tanaan Jungle, whether your character is of the gear grinding type or no-you could not move an inch in Legion without a certain level of gear rating.   Something they did right but refused to go further with: The Garrison.  This was wildly popular in beta, and many more features were added than originally intended because people loved it and wanted more.  Still, they wouldn’t add guild features, or make it easy for others to visit, or let you customize it in any way other than by the choices of your garrison buildings and where you placed them in the compound.   Interestingly, they offered some decorative packages for Holidays, which could have been expanded in so many ways to let people at least choose decorative packages and feel like they were making the only real home they’d ever been given in the game their home.   

Legion   Again, a long wait and grind to fly.  Crawl on your belly like a snake if you want to fly, player!  Here they actually killed crafting, in essence.  Not just a grind to advance, but roadblocks everywhere, including making you go in raids and dungeons to advance in your crafts.  Sometimes game developers seem to hate crafters, but not this much.  So they make you do raids, but don’t allow random Looking For Raid grouping because…why?  This is the first time ever class changes arrived with a wallop, making actually most classes not any fun to play.  I usually just adjust to changes for classes, adapt and move on, but man, they whacked everyone.  Except my Druid who was once again great.  Awful Dungeons, that you’re REQUIRED to go through over and over. None of the game areas are enjoyable to explore.  Stories are meh.   Endless artifact grind.  So you don’t get to enhance your character with new skills anymore. Your weapon, which looks like everyone else’s weapon, (unless you grind to get a different appearance) gets all the glory!   You are just a puppet.  I shall call Legion the Rats On A Wheel Approach To Gaming.

Ta da!  More than was on the page because blah blah blah goes the mind.  See ya Sunday, Rift Day.